


On Beauty (or: Three Times Sherlock Found Something Beautiful and One Time John Agreed)

by nox_candida



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Charity Auctions, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-17
Updated: 2011-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nox_candida/pseuds/nox_candida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Sherlock found something to be beautiful, and the one time John agreed with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Beauty (or: Three Times Sherlock Found Something Beautiful and One Time John Agreed)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sin_delight](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=sin_delight).



> Written for [sin_delight](http://sin-delight.livejournal.com/), who won my auction at [help_nz](http://help-nz.livejournal.com/). I had a number of choices on what to write, and I ultimately was inspired by this Andy Warhol quote: "Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it." This was beta'd by the fantastic [humantales](http://humantales.livejournal.com/) and Britpicked by the lovely [melaszka](http://melaszka.livejournal.com/).

**1\. Eyes**

“Matthew Forrester,” Detective Inspector Lestrade said, indicating the body lying face down on the sitting room floor. “Thirty-one years old. Lived here for about six months. We think he must have tripped and fallen, poor bastard. But there’s something odd—”

“Not really,” Sherlock sniffed, sending Lestrade a look which clearly communicated his disdain at being called in for something that was dull and a waste of his time. “Blunt trauma. He fell and hit his head on the coffee table—surely, Anderson, even you can deduce that. It’s murder, of course, but rather dull and pedestrian.”

John privately wondered at what made Sherlock so sure—it looked like an accident to him—and Anderson must have agreed because he opened his mouth to interject with something. John winced in anticipation.

“I know you were thinking accident, Anderson,” Sherlock said without looking at the man, his disdain clear, “But as I said, this was murder.”

Anderson opened his mouth—affronted, no doubt—but Lestrade sent him a sharp look before glancing back at Sherlock. “All right. How do you know that?”

“John,” Sherlock said, turning to him, “how long would you say this man’s been dead?”

John knelt down near the body and examined it closely for a brief moment. “Given the lividity of the skin and the stiffness in the muscles…has to be very close to twelve hours. Probably eleven to twelve hours ago.”

“Eleven and a half, actually,” Sherlock clarified, looking at John approvingly. “That puts the time of death at six this morning, when the sun was coming right through this window.”

“But that still doesn’t explain how this is murder,” Lestrade said, getting a glare for his trouble.

Sherlock sighed heavily and moved closer to the sofa—which was against the wall under the window—and dropped to his knees. He began examining underneath the piece of furniture.

“What are you--” John began, struggling to his feet and moving towards the consulting detective, but he’d barely taken three steps before Sherlock was hopping to his feet, a smug look on his face and a sliver of glass between his fingers.

“Here’s your murder weapon,” Sherlock said. At the blank looks that everyone in the room was sending him, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “This man has some sort of photophobia; he has prescription sunglasses in every room and his curtains are drawn—except for these. Obviously someone, probably his girlfriend, knew this and used a mirror to blind him painfully because they were in the middle of an argument.”

Lestrade nodded, looking impressed. “We did have a call from the downstairs neighbour about raised voices.”

“Why were they arguing?” John asked, curious and feeling sorry for the poor bastard.

“Money,” Sherlock answered dismissively. “His gambling problem. You can tell his obsession with cards from the blackjack tattoo on his shoulder,” Sherlock continued, kneeling next to the body and pulling the collar of his shirt down, exposing a tattoo with two cards—one a jack, the other an ace, both spades. “Highest hand in blackjack,” Sherlock commented. “If you check his internet history, you’ll find it full of various online poker websites.”

“Right,” Lestrade said, sounding satisfied. “We know who the girlfriend is, so we’ll just go--”

“Yes, yes, fine,” Sherlock said impatiently, still studying the body of Matthew Forrester. He was looking intensely at the man’s closed eyes. John knelt next to him, barely paying attention to the officers working and Lestrade giving orders to find the man’s girlfriend and bring her in for questioning.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

Sherlock didn’t look at him, instead reaching forward and lifting the eyelid of Mr Forrester. “But what sort of photophobia?” he asked, almost to himself.

It was on the tip of his tongue to list common ailments that included photophobia as a symptom—migraines, glaucoma, uveitis—when he stopped himself. The colour of the eye was unlike anything he’d ever seen. Incredibly pale, but almost a violet colour. “Ah,” Sherlock murmured, and let the eyelid drop, then moved to lift the other eye. This one, too, was the most unusual colour that John had ever seen.

“Oh, John,” Sherlock said, and glanced up at him with a wide smile. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

John blinked. “What, his eyes?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, in an almost reverent voice.

John had a feeling that he shouldn’t feel a twinge of jealousy for a dead man’s eyes, but he couldn’t help it. Nonetheless, he was fairly certain he kept his face neutral. “Why?”

“Ocular albinism,” Sherlock answered gleefully. “The second most common form of albinism. His girlfriend knew and used a mirror to enhance the effects of the sun on his eyes, knowing he would trip. He has before, countless times—the carpet is bunched up near his feet, did you notice? Simple.”

John was torn between admiration at Sherlock’s deductive prowess—always amazing and breathtaking to him—and sorrow for a young man who’d had to suffer. At least he’d stopped short of calling it brilliant, but it never hurt to remind Sherlock when he was crossing into ‘A Bit Not Good’ territory.

“Sherlock,” he said in a warning tone.

Sherlock barely spared him a glance, instead focusing intently on the dead man’s eyes.

John sighed, wondering when Sherlock would be ready to leave, when the man looked up at him with a glint in his eyes—which John had always found beautiful. It was a sort of covetous gleam, indicating to John that Sherlock had had an idea and that he wanted something. Given what he was currently inspecting, it wasn’t much of a leap to work out what he was thinking.

“No,” John said, firmly.

“But John—”

“No,” he repeated. “You already have more than enough eyeballs.”

“But I’ve never been able to work with such a unique specimen before,” Sherlock responded, frowning.

“No. I mean it.”

“Would you really deny me something so beautiful?” Sherlock asked, pouting.

John shook his head and stood up. “Yes. What about your other experiments? Surely you have enough to be getting on with, or can I clear the ears you simply _had_ to have out of the fridge?”

“I haven’t finished with those, yet! It’s a very important experiment, John, about the similarity and uniqueness—”

“Then clearly you’re too busy to start a new one.”

Sherlock scowled at him and swept from the crime scene, clearly intending to punish John by not waiting for him. That was fine, so long as Sherlock didn’t get any bright ideas about bringing home body parts from a crime scene.

Of course, two weeks later when John arrived home from a long day at the surgery and found Sherlock in a very good mood, bent over his workspace, he wasn’t terribly surprised to find the man working on a very familiar pair of human eyeballs.

John just sighed and hoped that Sherlock’s “experiment” would be over soon.

 **2\. Hair**

“Well, you can’t think this one is an accident,” Sherlock directed at Anderson, looking up at the body of Rebecca Reynolds, age twenty-seven, which was currently swinging gently from a beam on a building site, two storeys up. And, from the looks of things, by her own hair.

“Oh, and don’t bother with a snide remark, Anderson. I’m just going to ignore it anyway,” he added, already inspecting the surrounding area.

John—despite how sorry he felt for the poor girl, who had obviously been strung up against her will, if the bruises around her eyes and arms were any indication—couldn’t help but be morbidly fascinated by the scene. It was like staring at a train wreck—awful to behold and impossible to turn away.

Sherlock, of course, was in his element, though he was pretending not to be. “I honestly don’t know why you continue to call me out to cases that are so blindingly _obvious_ , even Anderson should be able to work it out.” As he said this, he was bending over to inspect some tracks he’d found in the mud.

Anderson hissed angrily and glared at the consulting detective, who ignored him.

“But she’s been strung up by her own hair,” Lestrade said in exasperation. Privately, John had to agree; how often do you see something like that?

“Yes,” Sherlock said, a small smile twitching at his lips. “That feature is, of course, interesting.”

“Sherlock,” John sighed.

“Right. You’re looking for a man—approximately sixteen stone and muscular—who’s familiar with this site and the victim, possibly a neighbour. He also recently asked the victim out on a date and was turned down scornfully.”

“’I’m busy washing my hair?’” John asked wryly, only to be surprised when Sherlock turned to him with a hint of a smile.

“Precisely. Ligature marks indicate strangulation—he wanted to be up close and see her die personally. He brought her to a location he was familiar with, because his tracks are assured and show no sign of hesitation. He wore trainers and carried her, because the indentations in the mud are deeper than would be expected and there are no drag marks. There’s bruising where he hit her, but he took great care to keep most of her hair together.”

“So he’s drawing attention to her hair because…?” John asked.

“Because that was her excuse, one of the oldest and flimsiest in existence. He knew it and wanted to get back at her for it.”

John couldn’t help but be impressed, in spite of the rather tragic picture Sherlock had painted. “That’s brilliant,” he said quietly, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear, and he was rewarded with Sherlock glancing at him and his lips lifting in a small smile.

“Poor girl,” Lestrade said, shaking his head, and then moved off to direct the forensics team to bring Ms Reynolds down from the beam.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Sherlock asked, his eyes on the girl.

John looked at him sceptically. A host of questions presented themselves to him: _Are you serious? You can’t mean that, surely? What on earth are you talking about?_ Instead, he said, “What do you mean?”

“The depths that people will sink to because of an emotional response. Think about it, John. He strung her up by her _hair_ ,” he said, eyes alight in fascination. “She was vain about her hair and thought it a thing of beauty, and then her killer decided to use it in a way that it was never intended. And it worked, because of how strong human hair is. Beautiful.”

And John found that he couldn’t say much to that, didn’t even know where to begin really. He shook his head instead. Somehow—and he wasn’t sure how it was possible—this was more disturbing than the eyes, and yet John discovered that that fact mattered not a bit when it came to his feelings for Sherlock Holmes.

There was probably something wrong with that.

 **3\. Skin**

When Sherlock first mentioned his new case—specifically the fact that it didn’t involve a dead body—John was suspicious. After all, while Sherlock had, in the past, taken cases that didn’t involve murder, it didn’t happen often. In fact, it’d been so long that John couldn’t quite recall Sherlock’s last non-homicidal case.

When he met Sherlock’s client, he began to understand why.

“…and when I went to demand my money back, Mr Holmes, do you know what happened? That awful man had packed up and there was nothing there! He said he could cure my skin condition, but he’s the one that caused it in the first place!”

Mrs Lucy Brown, aged fifty-nine, had come to Sherlock because she’d been defrauded of a substantial amount of money. A man had promised to cure her arthritis and sclerosis through the use of colloidal silver—too much of it. Mrs Brown had, of course, developed argyria and John secretly suspected that it was this—rather than the case of fraud, which sounded straightforward and rather boring by Sherlock’s usual standards—that had caused Sherlock to take the case on.

His suspicions were confirmed when he watched Sherlock studying Mrs Brown intently, to the point that John wasn’t even certain he was listening to the woman’s story.

“Can you help me, Mr Holmes?” the woman asked, tearfully.

“Hmm,” Sherlock said, still studying what little skin the woman had exposed. “There’s nothing that can be done for your argyria, Mrs Brown,” he said carelessly, causing John to wince. “I’m afraid that’s permanent. As to tracking the man responsible down, I can of course help you there.”

Mrs Brown’s jaw was hanging open—a surprised look on her face as if she didn’t know whether to be pleased or not—when Sherlock suddenly shifted. He smiled brightly in an overly friendly way that John knew was fake, stood up, and offered his hand to the poor woman. She looked bewildered, and John really didn’t blame her. Sherlock was bewildering at the best of times, but when he really applied himself, his personality was like being bludgeoned with a hammer.

“We’ll be in touch, Mrs Brown,” Sherlock said with a sweet smile. “In the meantime, allow me to help you downstairs and to a cab.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes,” she answered, still looking bewildered.

John had no doubt she was, since Sherlock stopped, and looked at her seriously. “Oh, there is one thing that would help me in my investigation,” he said.

“What’s that?” she asked curiously.

“A skin sample,” he answered, holding up a specimen jar. Seeing that she looked about to object, he continued, “It would help me determine the concentration of silver and if there are any other chemicals present, which will narrow down our pool of suspects.”

To John, it sounded like utter nonsense, but he kept his mouth shut as Mrs Brown relaxed and agreed. John was not at all surprised to see that Sherlock’s eyes were sparkling and his hands were eager in the collection.

Once Mrs Brown had been safely seen to a cab, Sherlock returned with a bounce to his step and a gleam in his eye. “Wasn’t it marvellous, John? That blue-coloured skin. So many opportunities to experiment,” he said, grinning.

John sighed. “I thought you took on her case because of that.”

“Of course, I did,” Sherlock answered breezily, already making his way to his microscope. “How often does one come into contact with a person suffering from argyria?”

John didn’t answer, because the answer was “almost never,” and he didn’t want to encourage Sherlock. “What about her case?” he asked, instead, feeling that someone should care about that.

“Oh,” Sherlock said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Solved already.”

“Aren’t you going to tell her?” John asked, raising his voice a bit. Not that he thought it would do any good, but he didn’t want Sherlock to ignore the question.

“Eventually, yes,” Sherlock said distractedly. In response to John’s silence—and the increased tension of the room—Sherlock looked up at him and frowned. “I’ve already sent Lestrade the relevant information on the man.”

John sighed and relaxed, because that was something, at least. He was almost afraid to ask why Sherlock hadn’t already said something to Mrs Brown because he had a feeling he knew the answer. But he asked, anyway, as if he’d been compelled to do it.

“So why haven’t you told her yet?”

“I’m hoping to persuade her to agree to more samples,” he said matter-of-factly.

John slumped back into his chair and debated the merits of pointing out that he was keeping a poor woman in suspense for no reason and that—if he asked nicely—the manipulation probably wouldn’t be necessary.

But then, he realised, this was Sherlock and things worked very differently around Sherlock.

“Do you think she’d leave me her liver?” Sherlock asked suddenly, looking up at John hopefully.

John rubbed his eyes and looked back at Sherlock. “No.”

“But think of everything I could learn!”

“No, Sherlock.”

John tried not to say, ‘I told you so,’ when Sherlock made his ill-advised proposal to Mrs Brown. Instead, he carefully inspected Sherlock’s eye and recommended a cold compress.

If he smirked a bit—especially when Sherlock huffed and sulked—well, who could blame him?

 **+1. Brains**

John was sitting at his desk writing up the case about Mrs Brown—and debating how honest he should be, particularly about Sherlock’s appreciation for the opportunities her skin provided—when he heard Sherlock bound up the stairs and burst into the room.

It was clear he was in a good mood, given his—by his standards, anyway—cheerful greeting.

This, however, did not distract John from the carrier bag Sherlock was carrying. It looked suspiciously as though it’d come from Bart’s.

“Sherlock?” he said, saving his draft and closing his laptop. “What’s in the bag?”

“Latest experiment,” Sherlock answered promptly, already setting the bag carefully onto the table that John insisted was for eating and Sherlock insisted was for working.

“What is it?” John asked, almost dreading the answer.

Sherlock grinned at him and didn’t say a word, instead removing a glass container from the bag and setting it gently—proudly—onto the table.

Inside, a human brain floated in a saline solution.

John sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Why?”

Sherlock’s whole demeanour changed. “It was left to me,” he said defensively, frowning at John’s lack of enthusiasm.

“And what, exactly, are you planning to do with it?”

Sherlock sent him a look which said, all too clearly, that John was an idiot for even asking. He supposed Sherlock had a point—it was obvious he was going to experiment—but he had meant what sorts of experiments was Sherlock planning to run.

“I know you’re going to experiment, Sherlock, but I meant, ‘What sort of experiments?’”

“This man was a genius,” Sherlock said, grasping the container with both hands, fingertips pressing hard enough to turn white. His nose was pressed against the glass, and it put John in mind of little children pressing against the window of a sweet shop—eager to get in and explore. “I’m going to run some tests and compare them with results from tests I’ve run on the brains of average people.”

It was on the tip of John’s tongue to ask _‘How many brains have you experimented on, exactly?’_ but he decided he’d rather not know the answer to that. Instead, he asked, “What do you hope to find?”

“Differences,” Sherlock answered, face still pressed against the container. “I want to know what causes a brain like this to translate into a brilliant, beautiful mind.”

He said it as if it were self-evident, but John thought it might be the most poetic thing he’d ever heard Sherlock say—including actual poetry. It made John think about what Sherlock’s brain would look like—not only out of his head, but inside as well. He could almost picture the neurons firing rapidly, sparks dancing along axons to other neurons, transmitting information at light speed.

He thought about what Sherlock’s brain would look like in a PET scan—bright colours lighting up, showing what Sherlock’s brain is doing at any given moment.

“Look at this, John,” Sherlock said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence that had descended upon them.

John looked to where Sherlock was indicating, a small area on the temporal lobe. John didn’t specialise in the brain and though he could name the basic structures of the brain and knew, generally speaking, the role that the most important played in how people function, he wasn’t sure what had drawn Sherlock’s attention.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Sherlock asked, sounding awed and gleeful at the same time, as though he couldn’t wait to dive in and begin taking the brain apart.

Perhaps the brains in front of him weren’t what he’d call beautiful, but he understood what Sherlock was trying to say. So John moved closer and raised his hand to the back of Sherlock’s head, letting his hand rest gently as his fingers burrowed into curly dark hair and rested against Sherlock’s skull.

The mind in this skull was beautiful, would always be beautiful to him. Sherlock could be totally silent, but John would see that brain working behind his gorgeous eyes and that was beautiful; he could be making rapid fire deductions, and simply listening was beautiful because that mind was amazing and unique. Sherlock was gorgeous, of course: beautiful, light eyes, soft, silky hair, flawless skin. But the brain inside, that was the real treasure. John finally understood why Sherlock considered his body transport.

But he couldn’t really put all of that in words to Sherlock, so he simply said, “Yeah. Beautiful.”


End file.
